Fear is Contagious

Scientists at Stony Brook University in New York have the first preliminary evidence that suggest people unconsciously detect fear.

The experiment scanned the brains of volunteers breathing the secretions of people in a state of fear and compared those to the brains of volunteers breathing the secretions of people in a state of calm.

Absorbent pads were used to collect the sweat from 20 first-time skydivers. For comparison, sweat was also collected from the same skydivers when they ran on a treadmill. The sweat was then nebulized,and volunteers unknowingly breathed the secretions while hooked up to a brain scanner.

The brain scans revealed that the volunteers' amygdala and hypothalamus -- brain regions associated with fear -- were more active in people who breathed the "fear" sweat. People, however, were unable to consciously distinguish the two types of sweat.

Dr. Liliane Mujica-Parodi said, "We demonstrate here the first direct evidence for a human alarm pheromone ... our findings indicate that there may be a hidden biological component to human social dynamics, in which emotional stress is, quite literally, 'contagious'."

Scientists believe that many animals -- including all mammals -- have this internal alarm system, since it is favorable to detect fear in others for one's own survival.

Read the full article on the Guardian website.